Pri's blog

Right now, there is a team of us at CEPA working with the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium (SLRC), a DFID funded research consortium led by the Overseas Development Institute ( ODI), London, on a six year programme looking at three research themes, namely 1.     Legitimacy. What are people’s perceptions, expectations and experiences of the state and of local-level governance? How does the way services are delivered and livelihoods are supported affect people’s views on the legitimacy of the state? 2.     Capacity. How do international actors interact with the state and local-level governance institutions? How successful are international attempts to build state capacity to deliver social protection, basic services and support to livelihoods? 3.     Livelihood trajectories . What do livelihood trajectories in conflict-affected situations tell us about the role of governments, aid agencies, markets and the private secto...

If we leave some of the rhetorical utterances such as the Small Wonder of Asia, aside, there are two frequently used descriptors of the Sri Lankan context.  One,   that Sri Lanka is a Middle Income Country, and two, that Sri Lanka is a post-conflict country.   I would like to examine these descriptions in slightly more depth.  Let’s take the  Middle Income Country idea.  It has significant impact in terms of Sri Lanka’s relations with the international donor community, and we have ostensibly lost some of our bilateral development partners and international NGO presence because of that.   But being a Middle Income Country merely means we fall into a particular GNI per capita category , and most of us should  realize by now that this is not a good enough measure to judge peoples’ well being. It is insufficient on a number of counts.  It does not take into account intra-country inequalities nor does it take into account the ...